Midnight and I dove, she on my tail as I shot at full speed towards the classroom building. The feeling I was getting was somewhere inside, and there was no time to enter through a conventional way. I couldn't spot any other entrances though, I hovered directly over the source and looked frantically for another way in.
"What is it? What's going on?" Midnight asked, still unconcerned. I wondered if she thought this was a game.
"What's the closest entrance, quick," I said.
"Launch pad on top of the gym there," she said, pointing at the narrow opening atop the gym. There were openings like this all over the school, but we'd have to go in and around. That would take time.
I flew onto the launch pad but did not land, instead staying airborne and maintaining momentum forward. There was a door on the inside which had been left wide open, I banked through and kept going. I heard Midnight land and start running to catch up behind me.
The gym inside had the pad entrance towards the top, so I entered another dive in the open air and whirled to reach the exit on the base floor. I landed running, and kept barreling at full speed. The feeling waned, and was gone, but I knew where it had been. I took a corner, then another, and saw it, in the middle of the floor.
Two fillies, around the same age as Rainbow, laying in the middle of the floor. Their bodies were grey, almost completely colorless. They weren't moving at all.
Midnight caught up to me, breathing heavily. I moved slowly towards the fillies laying there, but I could see they weren't breathing. I reached out to touch one, and there was no reaction. The body was cold. I was too late.
"Midnight, find the captain, instructor, anyone from the guard," I said.
"What happened to them?" she asked.
"I don't know, but this place is now a crime scene," I said, "we'll need somepony to cordon it off, identification, collect evidence," I said. She nodded, already familiar with the basics of investigation. It wasn't all combat training here. Without another word, she dashed off towards Wintermere's office.
I examined the scene to the best of my ability, and while I was no investigator, I had learned quite a bit from overhearing my mother speak about this sort of thing. The bodies were laying slumped on top of one another, I estimated they were pre-teens but we'd be able to run background checks on them once we identified them. There were no signs of actual injury anywhere on the bodies, save for the fact that the color had been literally siphoned out. It reminded me of my dream the night before.
I made sure not to touch or disturb the bodies until we had a photographer take pictures of the area. I did notice one odd thing though. A green, iridescent fluid had been spattered on the ground underneath the corpses, there was probably more beneath but I could only see the edges. I knew where I had seen that before, it was the same color as on that object I had sent Celestia. There must be a connection, but what?
I heard the sounds of ponies approaching, but didn't take my eyes off the scene. The object had not been painted, the green had been a part of the Ziristone, while here I could see that it was a fluid. That also meant I could get a chemist to find out what it was.
"By Celestia's beard..." I heard the captain say. I looked up to see him, Argent, and several cadets all standing nearby. Midnight looked like she'd seen a ghost, and I could see a nervous look on Argent and Wintermere's faces.
"Argent, we're going to need a full crew for this one. Cadets, rope off the scene, move!" he shouted. Though they had probably never dealt with a real scene, they had been trained in how to handle one, which was mostly just follow the investigator's orders. Within minutes, crime scene tape had surrounded the scene and the cadets were making sure nopony got too close. The commotion had caused a small crowd to form, mostly students who hadn't gone home yet, and the staff. I could see Eddy nearby, though he was not actively looking at the scene. He called to Midnight and gave her a towel, which she then gave to me a few moments later. I rubbed the char off my coat, but it wasn't going to come out completely. I looked like a muddy brown filly.
"Never seen anything like this," Wintermere said to me, though I was still busy puzzling out the curious fluid. It didn't fit. I could guess well enough about why the fillies were dead, though I couldn't tell anypony about what I knew.
"It's related to my line of work," I said to him. I think he understood, if he had been briefed then he would make the connection.
"Do they.. kill? I hadn't heard of killing before," he said.
"Neither had I, but there's been a lot of strange things going on lately. Add another to the pile," I said. Argent came up to him and passed him a small leather pouch.
"These were what was in their lockers", she said, "ID and dossiers inside."
He thanked her with a nod and sat down to read the dossiers. There was nothing particularly special in their belongings, school supplies, binders, notebooks. There was a small cloth and a glasses case, but the glasses were nowhere to be found. I was thinking it was a random attack, except it was lethal, and had done this strange color change.
Wintermere sighed. "This is beyond excusable, we need to close the building down," he said. No sooner had he said that than I head a commotion amongst the cadets.
"Let me through! Wintermere, what the hell is going on here?" Tax Break pushed her way through the line and stomped angrily towards us. She didn't react to the corpses, but rather the indignation of it all kept her angry and unstable.
"Specialist, what do you make of this?" he asked me.
"Murder," I said. Tax Break looked like I had slapped her.
"In my school? Impossible, what sort of trick are you playing?" she said. She went to kick the bodies but Wintermere stopped her.
"What are you doing you maniac? Don't disturb the crime scene!" he yelled at her. It finally dawned on her that the two were really dead, as she took on a completely different tone. I think she may have noticed the bodies were completely motionless, now being so close to them. Her voice was hushed.
"Who did it, why? What am I going to do?" she seemed to be asking herself, and not us.
"You'll be suspending the semester until we look into this," Wintermere said. I noticed the green fluid seemed to be getting dimmer. Tax Break sat down and rubbed her temples, thinking.
"Erdrick, you sold me a bum school. Curses are bad for business," she said. I quickly grabbed the glasses-cloth and swiped up some of the fluid, as it was disappearing before my eyes. I stuffed the cloth back into the pack Argent had left as I saw the fluid vanished completely.
"Is that photographer here yet?" Wintermere asked Argent. A group of three uniformed guardsponies arrived, one of whom had a large camera around his neck.
"What took you so long?" Wintermere said to them.
"Sorry captain," the camerapony said. These three looked to be from the guard's station, judging by the colors of their armor, and the lack of helmets. They busily started taking pictures and drew a chalk outline, while I sat back and let them do their work. Midnight came up to me as they did. She had a shaken look about her, and spoke softly.
"How did you know about this?" she said, looking at me with concern. This was going to be tricky to lie through.
"Didn't you hear the scream?" I asked her.
"There was a scream? I didn't hear a scream, are you sure?" she asked.
"Midnight, if you don't pay attention, you'll never be a great guardspony," I said. She looked confused, but let it drop there.
"What do you think did it?" she asked me.
"I haven't got any idea," I said, and for once that was true. This was all so wrong, so different.
"All right, you can move the bodies now," the photographer pony said. I pushed the top body off the bottom one and scanned over it for injuries. The missing pair of glasses were on top of the second body, having been crushed by the top one. Glass shards fell out as the body rolled off. There were no injuries, none at all, no bruises, contusions, cuts, anything, not even from the glasses. I would need privacy to use my other sight to check them, but for now I could see no reason they were dead, on either body.
"Hmm, suffocation?" Argent asked me.
"Check the necks, could be a broken bone or crushed windpipe," Wintermere said. I felt the necks but there didn't seem to be anything out of place.
"Nothing. We'll need to wait for the coroner on this one. Wrap them up," I said. The other two guardsponies had some bodybags with them, though the fillies were quite small and barely filled the bags. I watched as they hauled them out, and looked at the floor where they had lain. No sign of that green fluid at all, but I had gotten a sample on the cloth. I checked it to make sure it hadn't vanished, and it was still present.
There was nothing more to gather at the crime scene, but I stayed and kept watch anyway as Wintermere and the camerapony checked the area in detail. No clues, nothing even slightly out of place. No hoofprints. No signs of struggle. They were baffled, but I could tell Wintermere was thinking about his briefing, about the invisible attackers Celestia had no doubt told him about.
Eventually the crowd thinned and most of the ponies left reluctantly, though I did notice Eddy had remained behind, if at a distance. Tax Break hadn't left yet, but Wintermere had dismissed the cadets when some more guardsponies arrived to take over.
"Do we really have to shut down the school? I'll be ruined!" Tax was pleading to Wintermere, but he kept a stony expression.
"Random diseases are one thing, but murder? No, this semester is on hold. No pony enters this building except the cadets. I'll need the dormitories to be separated off and the doors locked," he said to her. He turned to Argent Scythe.
"All cadets are to be armed with non-practice weapons while on campus, until we can relocate them to the barracks. We'll also need around-the-clock surveillance here," he told her. She nodded and trotted off towards the dorm rooms. Finally, he turned to me.
"Ma'am, anything you can do to help.." he said.
"What would she know? Why is she doing the investigating anyway?" Tax Break asked.
"Miss Autrena is a specialist, and not just in combat. I am told this is not the first incident she has been present for," he said.
"Not that I sought this out. Misfortune follows me around," I said, which was true enough. Tax didn't enjoy the answer, but then again, she was right in the middle of a financial crisis. This delay was going to cause cancellations as panicked parents would withdraw their students. She grunted and stood up to leave, heading back towards her office. Probably to go have a breakdown where nopony could see her.
"I'll go take another look at bodies at the morgue," I said to Wintermere.
"How will that help?" he asked.
"A much closer look," I said. He didn't know what I was talking about, but accepted it anyway.
"All right then, you'll have whatever you need," he said.
I started off towards the gym exit, and found Midnight sitting around the corner, holding her tail with her forelegs.
"Shouldn't you be in the barracks?" I asked her. She shook her head.
"I didn't want to think it happened again," she said.
"What are you talking about?" I asked her.
"I heard this happened in Ponyville, but I wasn't there at the time. Saw the bodies though," she said, "gray, just like those ones."
Why hadn't I heard about this?
"When did this happen?" I asked.
"Couple months ago," she said. She wasn't looking at me, she was looking through me.
I thought quickly. That was around the time I had to go deal with a sudden cluster of infections. I had dozens of puzzle pieces, but I was still missing a few more. A picture had begun to form, but what was missing? There was an objective to all this, a pattern, but I didn't know what it was.
"That makes you the closest thing I have to experienced," I told her. She swallowed.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Midnight, much as I hate to say it, I need your help," I said.
"What, like a partner?" she asked.
"More or less. You got a real sword yet?" I asked.
"Yeah, Ms. Scythe gave me one," she said.
"Good, get anything you need, we're going to the morgue," I said.